Religion booknotes

Jean-Pierre Torrell's book on Thomas Aquinas is the second of a two-volume study of the saint. The first was a survey of his life and major works. Robert Royal has also translated that book into English, rendering J. A. Weisheipl's older Friar Thomas d'Aquino (corrected and amplified edition, 1983) obsolete. Although the new volume is related to the first, this magnificent study, a model of clarity and scholarship, can be read on its own. We are in the debt of Catholic University's press for making both volumes available in such a faithful and readable translation. (I have both volumes in French and can attest to their fidelity.)

Saint Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master

Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP; translated by Robert Royal

Catholic University of America Press, $49.95, 442 pp.

There are some self-styled Catholic intellectuals who regularly sneer at the word "spirituality" (usually appending the adjective "lite"). They would do well to read Torrell's opening chapter where, drawing on the work of the late Canadian scholar Walter Principe, he details the ancient pedigree and the deeply theological meaning of that word. St. Thomas understood spirituality as the life that comes from the practice of virtue obtained in baptism and strengthened through the other sacraments. In other words, the spiritual person (the pneumatikos of the Greek fathers) is the person who lives out the gift of grace.

It is the burden of Torrell's remaining chapters to explore how Thomas understood such a life. He does so brilliantly, synthesizing Thomas's doctrine of God, God's relationship to creation, the doctrine of "image and likeness," and Christology and pneumatology. In one particularly penetrating chapter, Torrell turns to the subject of friendship and relates it to the area of moral theology. The final chapter, titled "Ways to God," shows the deeply contemplative character of Thomas's thinking.

Like his fellow French scholar Marie Dominique Chenu, Torrell will not allow us to closet St. Thomas among the philosophers. Thomas was a biblical commentator, an educator of his fellow friars, a theologian, a preacher, and a great contemplative. If you want to revisit Aquinas, perhaps to be inspired to go back and read what at first seemed dry and unforgiving, this is a good place to start.

Witnesses to the Kingdom: The Martyrs of El Salvador and the Crucified People

Jon Sobrino

Orbis, $20, 230 pp.

Had Jon Sobrino not been lecturing in Thailand in 1989, he surely would have been numbered among the Jesuits murdered at the Central American University in El Salvador. In fact, Sobrino's life in El Salvador is studded with the memory of martyrs: Rutilio Grande, SJ, in 1977; the four American missionaries in 1980; Archbishop Oscar Romero in the same year; and the Jesuit priests less than a decade later. Those are the names that we remember. But Sobrino reminds us of others who were murdered--the legions of unnamed campesinos, organizers, and students.

Given that sad chronicle, it is no wonder Sobrino insists on the need for a theology of martyrdom for our day. This book is an answer to that need. It is not a systematic work but a pastiche of essays and selections from his other books. As such, it has a certain fugue-like quality, as Sobrino returns again and again to the same themes.

Pope John Paul II has written extensively about martyrdom and famously called for the compilation of a martyrology of the twentieth century. What, however, constitutes martyrdom? Historically it was death in defense of the faith. Still many church martyrs died for political reasons (St. Thomas Becket), even because of ethnicity, as was argued after the death of (St.) Edith Stein.

Sobrino is not interested in such canonical distinctions. Martyrdom, he argues, expresses the universe of suffering and death as well as the universe of generosity and love. As he writes, in a fine sentence, martyrdom shows that "Along side the God of life and the liberating God there are idols of death."

Sobrino uses the neologism "Jesuanic" martyrdom to describe dying the same way Jesus died: at the hands of evil powers who hate the light and the good. He argues that if we want to broaden the definition of martyrdom to include those who have died explicitly in defense of the faith, we should use this analogy. He points out that the simplest Salvadoran peasant knows why Jesus died just as he knows why Oscar Romero was murdered at the altar. Both died not from hatred of the faith, but from a hatred for justice and love. This points to the truth of what John Paul II wrote in Ut unum sint: the deepest form of ecumenical dialogue can be found in the witness of the martyrs who died in the manner of Jesus Christ.

Sobrino considers martyrdom from a number of theological perspectives. He notes, for example, that "it is clear that the poor of this world listen to and trust the people who risk their lives for them to the point of martyrdom." As a consequence, martyrdom both shares in the passion of Christ and is the final expression of love of neighbor. Finally--and this echoes both St. Thomas Aquinas and John Paul II--martyrdom is a vivid witness to the truth: some things are so fundamentally true that they are worth dying for.